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John Fitzgerald Byers
John Fitzgerald Byers was one of the three Lone Gunmen (the others being Richard Langly and Melvin Frohike). (TXF: "E.B.E.", et al.) He was named after President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, whose assassination also provided the Lone Gunmen with their collective name. (TXF: "Unusual Suspects") He was the son of Bertram Roosevelt Byers and died with the other Lone Gunmen in 2002, sacrificing his own life in order to protect the world from a bio-terrorist. (TLG: "Pilot"; TXF: "Jump the Shark") Before the Lone Gunmen John Fitzgerald Byers was born on November 22, 1963, to parents who, before JFK's assassination, had planned to call him "Bertram", after his father. (TXF: "Unusual Suspects"; TLG: "Pilot") As a child, John learned from his father about JFK, Camelot, the idea of a government as good as its people and the American dream. He would ultimately come to believe that those stories made him believe in the promise of his country and that they transformed him into the person he eventually became. (TLG: "Pilot") .]] By 1974, John had become a student at a school in Sterling, Virginia. Even though most of the other children in his class wanted to eventually grow up to become rich and famous, John wanted to ultimately be a career bureaucrat with the federal government. He also wanted to help as many people as he could and work hard to spread democracy throughout the world. One day, he and and other members of his class each individually admitted their ambitions to their fellow classmates, an exercise supervised by their female teacher. John, wearing a brown suit and tie, was more smartly dressed than most or all of his classmates. (TLG: "Like Water for Octane") Important Encounters badge, in 1989.]] By May 1989, Byers had been employed by the Federal Communications Commission as a public affairs officer. It was in that capacity that, in May, he attended the Computer and Electronics Show at the Baltimore Convention Center, where he first met an attractive woman who introduced herself as "Holly". Claiming that she was in desperate need of assistance because her psychotic former boyfriend had kidnapped her young daughter, the woman persuaded Byers to use his knowledge of computing and, in an effort to help her locate her daughter, he hacked into a secured Department of Defense site on the internet, although he was initially shocked at the prospect of doing so. To learn more about his new female friend and her situation, Byers enlisted the help of computer hackers Melvin Frohike and, later, Richard Langly. Byers was often referred to as a "narc" by several people, including Langly, Frohike and at least two other attendees at the show. He was extremely concerned about the possible consequences of being involved in hacking and was even about to turn himself in when he saw another FCC worker being wrongly arrested for the hacking he had done earlier, only to be stopped by Frohike. Helped by the hackers, Byers learned the actual truth - that his female friend had no daughter and was called Susanne Modeski (a name she had claimed was that of her daughter's), not "Holly". Byers and the hackers also discovered that a man who Susanne Modeski had described as her psychotic former boyfriend was actually FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder, who was searching for her in suspicion of murder; Byers and Frohike, while believing "Holly"'s story, had lied to Agent Mulder that they had not seen the woman he had been looking for. Susanne Modeski convinced Byers and the hackers that she was innocent of murder, having been framed for trying to quit her job, and apologised to Byers for having lied to him. She explained that, as an organic chemist for the Army Advanced Weapons Facility, she had worked to develop a gas which, in small doses, was known to cause anxiety and paranoia in its subjects. Byers and the hackers listened to Modeski's claims that secret elements within the US government was responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy, for planting electronic surveillance devices in hotel Bibles and were planning to test the gas she had developed on people in Baltimore. Even though the three men initially doubted Modeski's claims, Byers would later recall that he and the two hackers had felt like they had no choice but to help her, after they saw a gun she accidentally dropped from her bag onto the floor. Byers and the hackers were able to determine that Modeski's account of her own personal history was accurate and that the gas she had developed was being stored in a warehouse at 204 Fells Point Road. After travelling there with Modeski and the two hackers, Byers was surprised to find asthma inhalers in boxes, which Modeski accounted for by explaining that they were intended to be used to distribute the gas. The group then encountered Agent Mulder, who attempted to arrest Modeski and the three men. Byers tried to persuade the FBI agent that Modeski was innocent of murder but eventually complied when Mulder instructed him and the two hackers to lie down on the ground. After two armed men entered the warehouse and were stopped from detaining Modeski by Agent Mulder, they began shooting at him, accidentally releasing the gas and contaminating Mulder. Byers and the two hackers watched as the men, just before they could fatally shoot Agent Mulder, were shot themselves by Modeski, who soon fled the area. The warehouse was then sanitised by another group of men. After watching a member of the group bag one of the armed men who was still alive, Byers rhetorically asked of the group, "Who are you people?" Much to the annoyance of his two companions, he continued to rebelliously question the group and the man who led them, who fooled Byers into believing he was about to be shot even though the man used a gun that was not loaded. As the man and his group left the warehouse, Byers asked if their government organization was responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy, as Modeski had claimed. Before exiting the warehouse, the man replied, "I heard it was a lone gunman". Munch.]] After a S.W.A.T. team took Byers into custody with Frohike and Langly, he was questioned by a Detective Munch and recounted the events that had transpired since first meeting Modeski at the Baltimore Convention Center. Frohike and Langly blamed Byers and his female friend for landing them in jail, but they were fortunately soon released. Byers was instrumental in realizing that Modeski had gone to the offices of the Baltimore Guardian, where he and the other two men found her. She thanked them for having listened to her and, after Byers told her that he and the two hackers still wanted to help her, she urged them to tell the truth to as many people as possible and use it as their weapon. Byers and the other two men were shocked to see Modeski be abducted by men in a car, one of whom was the same man who had supervised the clean-up operation in the warehouse at 204 Fells Point Road. After they returned to the Baltimore Convention Center, Byers and his allies met with Mulder, who explained that Modeski was suddenly no longer wanted by the FBI even though she was still missing. Byers began to tell him about the secret forces within the government, Susanne Modeski and that hotel Bibles were being used for surveillance purposes. (TXF: "Unusual Suspects") Later the same year, Byers stopped working for the Federal Communications Commission, becoming no longer eligible for a government pension, and started The Lone Gunman newspaper with Frohike and Langly in an effort to discover and spread the truth to the people of America. He teamed up with his new partners in the belief that, as they were true believers in the promise of their country, he could work with them to expose those who would destroy the dream of truth, justice and a government as good as its people, and to write the stories those destroyers of the dream didn't want to be read. Byers' career decisions angered his father, however, and the two men lost contact in that year. (TLG: "Pilot") Helping Mulder and Scully in the 1990s 1994 Byers and his allies did, however, keep in contact with Mulder. While the FBI agent and his skeptical partner - Special Agent Dana Scully - were visiting the offices of The Lone Gunman in 1994, Byers claimed that Vladmir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Russian Social Democrats, was being put into power by the CIA, which he described as "the most heinous and evil force of the 20th century". Byers showed Agent Scully, who had never met him nor his partners before, the magnetic anti-counterfeiting strip inside a twenty dollar bill she gave him, breaking a law by defacing her money. Byers claimed that the strip was only one of several methods used by the US government to track members of the American public and to determine how much money a person was carrying when they stepped through a metal detector at an airport. He also suspected that the US government was hiding something by putting the strip on the inside of the bill, as other countries put the strip on the outside. When Mulder asked about the Gulf War Syndrome and the possibility that classified planes had been flown during the Persian Gulf War, Byers explained that the Gulf War Syndrome was due to artillery shells coated with depleted uranium and that, while the Persian Gulf War had been fought, there would have been no reason for secret planes to have been flown. He was amused when Mulder suggested the "weird" theory that UFOs had caused the Gulf War Syndrome, even though Byers did admit that the ideas of his group were almost as weird as Mulder's. (TXF: "E.B.E.") In April of the same year, Byers and his business partners published an article in that month's edition of The Lone Gunman that concerned the CIA's new micro-video camera, which was small enough to be placed on the back of a fly. Byers later remembered the article after Mulder showed him and his partners a fly that had been purposefully dropped onto a lawn in Franklin, Pennsylvania. Byers identified the insect as a Eurasian cluster fly, commenting that it often infested vegetation and was known to inflict a great deal of damage to crops. He offered the theory that agents of competing South American agricultural corporations, while posing as Franklin city employees, were secretly releasing flies to destroy crops but his hypothesis was considered to be improbable when it was discovered that the fly had been irradiated, most likely to control propagation. When Mulder asked about a specific chemical compound, Byers identified the substance as lysergic dimethrin, an unreleased experimental synthetic insecticide that triggered a fear response in insects. When asked whether the substance might affect humans in the same way, Byers showed Mulder a video of a chemical called D.D.T., which the government had determined to be safe, being sprayed onto lawns and people. Byers explained that, thirty years later, it had been discovered that women exposed to the chemical had higher rates of breast cancer. As local officials had put so much trust in their belief that the chemical was safe, it had subsequently taken a decade before it had been banned. Byers remarked that, since then, groups carrying out similar stunts with different chemicals only differed in the fact that they had learned how to be more discreet. (TXF: "Blood") After Scully was returned following her abduction, Byers studied her medical charts in the offices of The Lone Gunman and downloaded her medical data to the newest member of his group, a hacker known as "the Thinker". Byers determined that the charts, which Mulder and Frohike had smuggled out of the hospital where Scully was staying, showed that abnormal protein chains, unlike any Byers had ever seen before, were present in her blood. He relayed news to Mulder, Frohike and Langly, while they were with him in the office, that "the Thinker" had determined the protein chains to be a result of branched DNA, a biological equivalent of a silicon microchip. When asked what it might be used for, Byers answered that it could be the developmental stages of a biological marker. Other theories were suggested, but Byers discovered that none of them, not even his own, were accurate as the branched DNA was inactive, a waste product that was nothing more than a biological poison remaining from experiments done on Scully that were no longer being conducted. In response to a question Mulder asked regarding the possibility of whether Scully would survive, Byers gave him the solemn news that, even if her immune system had not been decimated and she was perfectly healthy, he would doubt that she could recover from having inactive branched DNA in her blood. (TXF: "One Breath") Miraculously, Scully did continue to live, however, and was able to return to working with Mulder. (TXF: "One Breath", "Firewalker") 1995 In early 1995, Byers (accompanied by Frohike) communicated, via live audio and visual satellite transmission, with Mulder, who was in Fairfield, Idaho. Byers was curious as to what cost using the satellite equipment would be to the American taxpayers (the answer was expensive - "150 bucks an hour"!) When asked what he knew about Fairfield, Byers told Mulder that the town's zoo was the subject of many bizarre stories regarding escapes and disappearances of animals and that, weirdly, no animal at the zoo had ever brought a pregnancy to term. Byers also revealed that a gorilla belonging to the woman who ran the zoo knew sign language, supposedly with a vocabulary of 1,000 words. (TXF: "Fearful Symmetry") On April 11 of the same year, Byers and his two partners discovered that "the Thinker", whose real name was Kenneth Soona, had hacked into the Defense Department computer system, as Byers had done in 1989, and urgently went to Mulder's apartment to deliver him the serious news. (TXF: "Anasazi", "Unusual Suspects") Fearing that he and his allies may have been followed to the apartment by a multinational black ops unit code-named Garnet, Byers asked, after Mulder opened his door, if they could speak with him inside his apartment. Once Mulder reluctantly complied and had begun listening to his visitors, Byers reminded him that he had previously heard of Kenneth Soona, but referred to only as "the Thinker", and revealed the hacker's crime to Mulder. Byers had realized that whatever "the Thinker" had become involved in, the anarchistic hacker was now an extremely wanted man since customs and immigration had gone on full alert and every port of igress had been closed. When Mulder asked why they had come to him, Byers revealed that, in the last communique he and his partners had received from "the Thinker", the hacker had asked to meet with Mulder at a certain location within a three hour time window. When the men heard a nearby gunshot, Byers followed his three friends as they raced out of Mulder's apartment and discovered that a female neighbor to Mulder had shot her husband of thirty years, killing him. (TXF: "Anasazi") Byers later examined a black and white photograph that Mulder and Scully were interested in. Although the image seemed to merely show eight men standing in front of a large building, Byers was amazed by the picture when Mulder told him it had been taken about 1973, as he had recognised one of the men as Victor Klemper. Byers explained that Klemper was the most evil Nazi to have escaped the Nuremburg trials and that he, as well as a notorious Nazi called Wernher von Braun, had been granted safe haven in the US due to a post-World War II project known as Operation Paper Clip. In exchange, Klemper and Von Braun had helped the US win the space race as, using their scientific data, the Americans had managed to put astronauts on the moon before the Russians. Byers explained that his earlier amazement had been due to the fact that, even though Operation Paper Clip was supposed to have been scrapped in the 1950s, the picture seemed to prove otherwise. He was still present when, moments later, Frohike entered and relayed news to Scully that her sister was in critical condition after having been shot. (TXF: "Paper Clip") In October of the same year, Byers helped analyse several satellite photos of a ship. He explained to Mulder, who claimed to have obtained the images from a Japanese diplomat, that the pictures had been taken using German optics, technology that was probably American and a satellite that was most likely Japanese. Once the ship had been identified as the Talapus, Byers explained that the vessel had been a salvage ship out of San Diego that had spent months searching for a Japanese submarine that had been rumored to be carrying a load of gold bullion when it sank in World War II. Byers later demonstrated that the pictures tracked the ship as it had journeyed through the Panama canal to a naval shipyard in Newport News, Virginia. Puzzled as to why the craft had gone there and had not returned to San Diego, Mulder suggested, while Byers stood next to him, that the Talapus may have found something other than the Japanese submarine. (TXF: "Nisei") In late 1995, Byers used his ice-skating expertise while helping his compatriots retrieve a digital tape of the MJ files, data stolen by "the Thinker" near the start of the year, which was reportedly in a locker at Capital Ice, an ice-skating arena in Rockville, Maryland. (TXF: "Apocrypha", "Anasazi") Along with Langly, Byers looked for any suspicious spectators while Frohike went to the locker. To the disappointment of the group and Mulder, only an empty envelope had been concealed within the locker. However, they later found a faded impression of writing on the envelope, and, as Mulder went over the impression with a pencil, Byers recalled that the FBI had managed to identify and convict a major serial murderer with the proof of a pen impression and detailed the Bureau's ability to lift a perfect impression from a surface. Byers also witnessed Mulder's discovery that the "writing" was actually a New York City phone number. (TXF: "Apocrypha") 1996 In April 1996, Byers helped analyse a device that Mulder brought to him and his partners. Byers commented to Mulder that the device looked very similar to a standard video trap, used for blocking premium cable channels. He later showed Mulder that two test signals, one of which was routed through the device, initially seemed identical. After his compatriots showed Mulder that the test signals were actually different, Byers explained that the difference was caused by extra information being added by the device. He explained that neither he nor his partners knew the nature of the added information and that all they could ascertain was that the device, which Byers believed was of an amazingly sophisticated design, was emitting a signal. After Scully became extremely paranoid and went missing, Byers and his fellow colleagues examined a video tape found in her room that contained television footage which had passed through the device. When Mulder next visited them, Byers explained that they had used interpolating freeware downloaded from the internet to blank out visible frames that had been recorded onto the videotape, thus isolating the signal emitted by the device. Byers and his partners had then significantly slowed the signal down since, as he explained to Mulder, it had been designed to cycle at a certain rate in order to induce a condition known as the "photic driving response", the manipulation of which had been linked to heightened suggestibility in several studies. Byers compared the device's signal to subliminal messages that had been used in cinemas to sell popcorn and recalled that both Russian and American scientists had worked for decades to develop technologies like the device Mulder had found. Though Mulder had watched videotapes of images that had been sent through the device, he had not been affected in the same way as Scully. When asked if color could be a factor in the device's signal, Frohike and Langly looked at Byers, who replied, "Maybe". After Mulder admitted that he was red-green color-blind, Byers speculated that his inability to perceive red might render him immune to the mind-altering effects of the images. He continued discussing the theory with his colleagues as Mulder received a telephone message from the Maryland State Police. Byers and his partners later learned from Mulder that he had been asked to identify a body that had possibly been Scully's. (TXF: "Wetwired") While Frohike and Langly helped Mulder break into the Lombard Research Facility to seek help with Scully's cancer, Byers was sent to warn Scully of a possible threat posed by clones and the Grey-Haired Man sent to kill them. (TXF: "Memento Mori") Byers died with the other Gunmen in 2002, protecting the world from a bio-terrorist. (TXF: "Jump the Shark") Relationships Family Bertram Roosevelt Byers Main article: Bertram Roosevelt Byers Romantic Interests Susanne Modeski Main article: Susanne Modeski Colleagues Melvin Frohike Main article: Melvin Frohike Richard Langly Main article: Richard Langly Jimmy Bond Main article: Jimmy Bond Contacts Fox Mulder ''Main article: Fox Mulder Dana Scully Main article: Dana Scully Enemies Yves Adele Harlow Main article: Yves Adele Harlow Morris Fletcher Main article: Morris Fletcher Appearances *TLG *TXF: **"E.B.E." (Season 1) **"Blood" (Season 2) **"One Breath" **"Fearful Symmetry" **"Anasazi" **"Paper Clip" (Season 3) **"Nisei" **"Apocrypha" **"Wetwired" **"Memento Mori" **"Redux" (Season 5) **"Redux II" **"Unusual Suspects" **"Kill Switch" **"The End" *The X-Files Movie **"Triangle" (Season 6) **"Dreamland II" **"One Son" **"Three of a Kind" **"Field Trip" **"First Person Shooter" (Season 7) **"En Ami" **"Requiem" **"Within" (Season 8) **"Via Negativa" **"The Gift" **"DeadAlive" **"Three Words" **"Existence" **"Nothing Important Happened Today" (Season 9) **"Nothing Important Happened Today II" **"Provenance" **"Providence" **"Jump the Shark" **"The Truth" Byers, John Fitzgerald